Xi, Obama work on blueprint for bilateral ties
June 8, 2013, 6:33 am

President Xi (left) stressed on building a new type of power relations between the two nations [Xinhua]

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart, Barack Obama, have met in Rancho Mirage, California, holding the first China-US summit since the two countries completed their recent leadership transitions.

President Xi has stressed on building a new type of power relations between the two nations.

“Today I meet here with President Obama to map out a blueprint for the development of China-US relations and conduct cooperation across the Pacific Ocean,” the Chinese president said.

Xi had asserted during his last visit to the US that the vast Pacific Ocean has enough room to accommodate the development of two great powers in the world.

“What kind of a relationship do we need? What type of cooperation should China and the United States have to achieve win-win results? How can both countries work together to promote peace and development in the world? These questions are major concerns not only of the two countries and two peoples, but also of the whole international community,” Xi said in California.

The summit is the first face-to-face meeting between the presidents of China and the United States since Xi assumed the presidency in March and Obama won a second presidential term in the last November elections.

Obama did refer to the many problem areas in the bilateral ties between the two countries, including cybersecurity, trade disputes, international hotspots like Syria, Iran and North Korea.

“Inevitably there are areas of tension between our countries,” President Obama noted.

Obama sought to calm Chinese concerns of alleged US-led efforts to ‘contain’ China by saying that the US welcomed the rise of a peaceful China and wanted “economic order where nations are playing by the same rules”.

Xi arrived in the US state of California on Thursday, after wrapping up a three-nation Latin America tour, which took him to Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica and Mexico.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.